


the hope of it all

by soupytwist



Category: folklore - Taylor Swift (Album), folklore: Teenage Love Triangle Trilogy - Taylor Swift
Genre: F/M, First Time, Queer Themes, Trans Character, coming of age in the 21st century, some technically underage sex but only as much as the canon, way more about the college application process than I expected
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28138401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soupytwist/pseuds/soupytwist
Summary: I remember thinkin' I had you.The story of August.
Relationships: James/narrator of August
Comments: 12
Kudos: 14
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	the hope of it all

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chicafrom3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicafrom3/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, chicafrom3! I loved your prompts: I hope this fulfills your holiday dreams.
> 
> Thanks to the beta crew, but especially L, who went above and beyond in helping me iron out all the nitty gritty details. (There really is a Stop&Shop in the Westerly Crossings mall, anyone who cares!) If it still sucks, that's my fault.

August turns up in Westerly with an old rucksack on her back, a brand new driver's license in her pocket, and the knowledge that nothing she finds there is going to be what she's looking for. But that's okay; she's seventeen, there'll be a purpose somewhere. She's just got to keep looking for it.

What she actually finds is James. He's working a lifeguard shift down on Misquamicut beach. She's just walking -- anything to get out of her aunt's house, really, God knows there's nothing much else to do. There's already tourists starting to set up sunshades and picnic blankets, even though it's early. She kicks off her Converse to walk on the sand. As she does, she looks up from the scrubby windswept beach grass at the edge of the path to the lifeguard station, and nothing in her life is the same again.

–

He seems to like her, too, is the thing. It's like some movie come to life: they chat on and off all day, and he keeps looking at her like she's something special. She never thought someone so gorgeous would shyly ask if he could buy her a cone from the Dairy Bar. They eat their ice-cream staring out at the waves and she feels like she could tell him anything.

That night she texts her mom. _Had a nice burger for lunch_ , she writes. Then, after a pause, _I've met a boy. He seems nice._

–

She applies for a bunch of summer jobs: the lifeguard positions went a couple months ago, or she'd have tried for that, but she goes for everything else she can find. Her aunt starts talking about how “industrious” August is and how impressed her aunt is at August's “get up and go”. August had planned to try for jobs, sure, her mom had been pretty clear about that, but it isn't the 30 hours a week she ends up getting at the Stop&Shop in the strip mall that she cares about.

She makes a habit of taking a morning walk on the beach, casually tells him about it as though it doesn't matter. James, it turns out, sometimes goes to the Game Stop in the mall after work. “Maybe I'll stop by,” he says.

He does.

They end up walking around the mall, even though it's small and kind of boring. It's good to be outside - sea breeze fresh in their lungs, sun bright in their eyes. James leans against the wall, and August thinks maybe she's not the only one who doesn't want to get in separate cars and drive away.

A couple days later, August is standing against the same bit of wall, brick warm from the sun against her palm, when James leans in, asks “Is this okay?” and kisses her.

August has kissed exactly one other person before, if you don't count having to kiss her great aunt on the cheek every Thanksgiving even though it's gross. That was Tommy, at the junior formal: she'd asked him if he wanted to go (“as friends!”), and at the end of the evening they'd ended up at Denny's with three other couples. Waiting for pancakes while everyone around them made out remains one of the most awkward things August has experienced in her life, not improved by Tommy looking around and giving a “how about it?” kind of shrug and laying one on her. It had been... perfectly fine. Cool, kinda damp. Definitely involved a lot of not knowing where to put her hands or whether she should stick her tongue out or not. Not how August had imagined her first kiss. 

She hadn't really understood what all the fuss was about, then. But oh, she does now.

The kiss lasts probably less than a minute, as measured by the shifting digits of the clock on her phone. But as far as August is concerned, when she opens her eyes, years have passed. She hadn't known that lips could feel like that, that her skin could feel like that, like it was lighting up from the inside.

James looks at her, looking up from under his baseball cap. He looks a little uncomfortable, unsure.

“What's wrong?” she says. _He_ kissed _her_ , he doesn't _look_ like he's regretting it, but... did she forget to brush her teeth? Did she do something wrong?

“No, nothing, nothing's wrong,” he says. She doesn't have anything to say to that, but then he continues, “There's, um, some stuff I haven't told you, though, and I guess... I guess I should.”

“Okay?” she says, because what else are you supposed to do with that? “So what's up?”

That's how they end up in her car, driving down Route 1, heading south. As she drives, James tells her – about himself, about being brought up as a girl, about how sure he was that he wasn't. About how he'd told his family just a couple months ago, and how they hadn't kicked him out but how he'd decided he was going to make it work living with roommates instead, just to get away from the questions.

August snaps her mouth shut on the questions she had, in fact, been about to ask. “Are your roommates okay?” she asks instead.

“Yeah, they kinda look after me,” he says. “I met them before I was sure, they helped a lot with, y'know, everything... it's nice of them to let me crash in the spare room.”

“Yeah,” says August.

This is probably the most grown-up – the most _adult_ \- conversation she's ever had, and the breeze coming in through the open windows as they drive seems to be part of that, somehow, like it's blowing the old world away and leaving space for a whole new one. It's the first time August has really felt the freedom the car gives her: if she just stays on the road, and keeps going, she'll end up in Florida. Every exit could lead her somewhere new, even if right now that's just Stonington.

“You... don't mind?” says James.

“It's not my business to mind, is it?” says August. “But no, I don't.”

Her family might mind, if they knew. But she, August, her own self? She doesn't. She doesn't know what that says about her: she's pretty sure her brother would say it makes her gay, to have a crush on a trans person, but Elliot's wrong about lots of things and even if he's right, would that be a problem? Maybe she just gets to be gay, then. She can be whatever she wants. The idea fizzes through her brain to the point where she almost feels drunk, almost wants to laugh. She's here, driving, with a gorgeous boy who wants to kiss her. What else matters?

They're coming up to Mystic and she sees a familiar sign off to the right. Coffee and donuts suddenly sounds like a great idea. “Hey, we could get Dunks.”

“We could.”

They kiss again in the parking lot of the Dunkin' Donuts, coffee-and-sugar flavoured, up against the side of the car. It's wonderful.

Back in the parking lot of the Crossings mall, dropping him off so he can pick up his car, she thinks they might kiss again. She leans forward, even. He doesn't pick up on it, just pats her on the shoulder. 

But it's okay, because he does text her later that night, and two days later he invites her back to his place. 

–

Sex, it turns out, is pretty great. 

James hasn't done it before either. For once, James seems more nervous than she does: once they've both admitted they don't know what they're doing, August feels relieved, a little giddy with kisses and smooth tanned skin contrasted against white cotton sheets, but James goes sort of shy. It's cute. 

She learns many things. James doesn't like his chest being touched, and keeps his binder on a lot of the time; she does. They both like kissing, and licking, and taking their time. She's looking forward to finding out what else they can add to the repertoire, one day, but they'll have to get bored first.

–

As the days go by, August racks up firsts. First orgasms from someone else; first time driving to an honest-to-god makeout spot; first time kissing in the sand in the evening sun. She feels like she's suddenly catching up with all the stuff she never thought she'd have.

 _I think this is love_ , she writes in her diary.

_

She spends her shifts at Stop&Shop half-heartedly restocking shelves while daydreaming. She should probably care about that, but for eleven fifty an hour, she's not that worried. The other staff have noticed, and they make fun of her a bit for having a boyfriend she's mooning over, but it's mostly in a nice way. They invite her out for drinks – the younger ones are her own age, so bars are out, but they can drink a beer or two on the beach. She even goes, once, but although she likes the feeling of having co-workers, colleagues, she spends the whole time knowing she'd rather be at her aunt's, playing mindless games on her phone, just in case James messages that he's free after all.

She wants to be cool about it – she's never been really into all those girl magazines, Cosmo Girl and Seventeen and all of that stuff, and she tells herself that nobody sees their boyfriend _every_ day or anything, it's fine. She swings by Misquamicut on her off days, where he's usually on lifeguard shift; she always feels better when he smiles at her. Sometimes he texts her that he's coming by the mall. On those days she runs out the back at the end of her shift, heedless of sore feet or asshole customers, to find him leaning against the wall or her car and she just has to kiss him and kiss him and kiss him.

It's a shame he works so much, though. James takes every shift he can get at the lifeguard station, and August knows he's always worried about money. He's mentioned pickup shifts at restaurants once or twice. He does at least some shifts at the hotel where her colleague Inez's parents work, too. It's worrying, but it feels very mature, somehow. Grown up. She lets her mind fill up with dreams of sharing a place, no roommates or relatives, just them.

Of course, she's got to figure out college first. Her mom has started talking about early admission and all of that stuff as soon as she got her SAT score, and now her dad's started too. 

“Are you applying for college this fall?” she asks, later, lying in bed next to James, listening to the rattle of the ancient A/C unit in the window. It's only ten days until school starts again; it all seems to be going so quickly.

“I don't know,” says James, to the ceiling. “I don't – like, my grades haven't exactly been great. And I've never tried to handle school and a job before. Getting through this next year is more than enough right now. And my – there's like five different people who'd all murder me if I dropped out of school.”

“Oh. Right, sure.” She considers this. She thinks about his three roommates – they've all got piercings and bright neon hair. Two of them are apparently teaching James how to cook, and the third gave August a card with their social media details on it, just in case she needed extra help with math. She thinks about how hard he must be working to cover rent. “At least if you finish high school you can always apply later if you want, right?”

“I guess.” He rolls over to face her, looks her in the eye. “What about you? You're so smart.”

“I don't know either,” she says, suddenly realising that it's true. She's assumed so far that she'll be going to college, one way or another, but James has made her realise that maybe she doesn't have to, if she doesn't want to. So she got a 1500 on the SAT, she's good at standardised tests, that doesn't have to _mean_ anything. “Maybe? Probably?” She laces her fingers with James'. “My parents both went to college, I think they'd be pretty pissed if I didn't.”

“What do they want you to do?”

She shrugs. “Law, or medicine – something where they think you can make a ton of money.”

All of a sudden, James is looking at her, but not at her; it's more like he's looking at something behind her head. “Oh.”

August feels like there's something in the conversation that she's missed, that she isn't getting. “I know paying the bills is important, but once you've got enough to eat... I don't think I want my life to be about nothing but money, you know?”

James looks at her again, and now he seems to be back in the same room. “Yeah. I get that. Yeah.”

–

The next day is gorgeous and sunny, the sort of day you want to share. August's aunt points out that August hasn't been to Napatree yet, that none of them have work, and asks if she wants to go. “It's just down the road, practically, and you couldn't ask for a better day for it.”

August kind of does want to go; just not with her aunt and uncle. Napatree is meant to be just the sort of thing she should be _hoping_ for from a summer in Rhode Island, with beautiful views of the water and a protected beach and stuff. She says she'll have to check with her friends, and texts James.

Half an hour later, she still hasn't had a reply. 

“Your friends busy?” says her aunt. “Come on, you've barely hung out with us this summer, let's go.”

They do. It should be a good time; it is a good time. But despite the sunshine and the cry of the seabirds, August reads the same page of her Stephen King novel again and again, checking her phone for a text that doesn't arrive. Something is unquestionably, indefinably wrong.

–

The next day, she finally gets a reply. She's at work, and she checks her phone on her break, sitting on a pile of boxes in the corner of the store room next to the employee lockers. _Meet me behind the mall_ , it says. _After your shift._

–

He's not leaning against her car, this time. He's in _his_ car, skateboard shoved in the back seat, and when she opens the passenger door it smells like sand. She doesn't kiss him hello, even though she wants to; she feels for a moment like if she pays that toll, makes that sacrifice, whatever she did wrong will be made right. The inevitable will be avoided, and it will all be okay. 

He turns right out of the parking lot in silence. The trees bordering the road roll by in an identical green blur, hypnotic. August doesn't want to break whatever weird barrier this silence is between them, the only thing between her and whatever's on the other side. They still don't really speak even as the trees thicken and darken and August realizes they're coming up to a state park – Burlingame, she thinks.

“What's going on?” she asks, because they're at some sort of visitor's center and James is pulling up in some tiny parking lot and _what the fuck_.

“I thought we could go for a walk,” says James.

“Now?” 

“Yeah, I mean-” He pauses, and looks at her like he might look at a vending machine he isn't sure is working, where he put in the quarters but is worried he's going to get a Mountain Dew even though the button said Coke. “I thought it might be a nice place for a walk so we could talk.”

He looks really uncomfortable, and August completely understands all the jokes about flipping tables, because going on a nice walk with someone when you're about to break up or something is suddenly unbearable. “Or we could talk _here_ ,” she hears herself say.

Which is how they break up sitting in the car in a tiny parking lot next to a visitor information sign.

“What you said the other night – about priorities – I realised mine have been, like, _all over_ the place, and I have to at least try to put things right, you know?”

“What does that mean?” says August. Isn't this a conversation she's seen on TV? Apparently real people break up too. God, they're breaking up. “Is it-” She breathes in; she doesn't even know how she was going to end that sentence. _Is it something I did?_ maybe. Shit.

“It's just that I've got to get my head back in the game and try to sort my life out. You get it, right?”

“Right.”

“Are you okay? I know – it's been great, this summer, but we both knew this wasn't forever.”

August's hands tighten on the strap of her purse. “Sure. Could we go back now, please?”

James pulls the car out of the spot, and circles round the parking lot to the exit. They leave without ever having gotten out of the car.

_

He drops her off at her aunt's place. She manages to walk steadily up the path, but as soon as she's out of sight, she's moving. The porch door bangs behind her and her aunt calls out, something about _did you have a nice day, how was the park?_ , but August doesn't stop, she just keeps on going until she gets to her room and throws herself down on the bed and cries.

–

The next morning she calls in sick to Stop&Shop. Who the hell cares.

–

The day after that, she has to beg a ride from her aunt, because her car is still at the mall. She dashes in, still pulling her hair into a ponytail, with maybe thirty seconds to go before she's late.

“Oh honey, you look rough,” says one of her colleagues – Jason, she thinks his name is, she's only been on shift with him once.

“Don't be mean,” says Inez. She offers August a stick of gum as they head out onto the shop floor. “You okay? Men are scum.”

“Yeah,” says August, to the second part of that.

–

After their shift – which sucks, nobody should ever have to work retail when their heart is broken – Inez says “you're coming with me”, and before August can say anything else about it, she and Inez are going down to the rocks. Inez has a takeout carton of fries and a bottle of soda, and they sit there and share them, staring out at the waves. 

“You weren't planning on staying here, though, right?” says Inez, passing over the fries and swapping it for the Coke. “You were always going home at the end of summer.”

“I know,” says August. She shoves two fries in her mouth: she's hungrier than she thought. The salt of the air and the salt of the fries, maybe. She swallows. “Still a complete idiot, though.”

“ _He_ is, you mean,” says Inez. She makes a dismissive noise. “Being nice to look at and meaning well is not enough in this world.”

“Mm,” says August. She's looking out at the point where the grey-blue of the ocean meets the slightly lighter blue of the sky, where two infinities converge and make everything else seem small. She turns back to Inez slightly, to the world of solid grey rocks and gulls wheeling overhead and boys who don't love you. She picks up one of the small grey pebbles, and rolls it around and around in her hand; it's cool and solidly smooth in her hand. “You ever just want to be a shade of the color blue?”

“You're fucking weird,” says Inez. She steals a fry. “Sure.”

“I'm just saying, it would be peaceful.” August tucks the pebble into the pocket of her shorts.

Inez waves the fry meaningfully. “And _I_ am just saying, he doesn't deserve you.”

–

That night she texts her mom _I'm coming home Friday, can't wait to see you_ , and wishes she meant it. It's not entirely untrue; she loves her mom. She loves her dad. But she thinks she will never be able to really explain this summer in a way that makes sense to them, a way that gets through, and she thinks maybe she's finally old enough to see that for what it is.

–

When she gets back to her parents' house in Mount Kisco that Friday, she realises she's checking her phone to see if James has messaged her. She throws the phone in her room, and goes to help her mom with dinner.

Her mom is making chicken and potatoes. August is given the job of making the salad to go with it. 

“What sort of salad do you want?” says August, looking in the refrigerator.

“Oh, just the usual, honey.” August pauses, and her mom must have noticed, because she looks up. “Why, don't you like it?”

She should probably have guessed. She tries to not sigh audibly. “No, Mom, I like it fine.” 

Right. Lettuce, tomato, avocado. Back to reality. August starts pulling the ingredients out and ready to chop: something she's done maybe a hundred times before, but now feels surreal and strange and like it belongs to an entirely different world.

“I'm sorry it didn't work out with that boy.”

August does not look around, and starts chopping. “Me too, Mom.”

–

The feeling of living in a world unveiled persists when she goes back to school, too. She is suddenly incredibly aware of how little she has in common with most of the people bustling around her. It's not that she ever would have called herself popular before, God knows, but she hadn't thought of herself and her friends as people who hung out together mostly just so they'd have someone to sit with at lunch. Would she hang out with these people, if she had a choice? She's had the occasional message from one or two people over the summer, but that's about it.

No wonder she'd been fine with going to Rhode Island for the summer. August looks around and sees the people she thinks she _should_ be able to tell all about her summer, and realises she doesn't really want to.

–

She messages Inez every now and again. Nothing much, but it works as a reminder that the summer actually happened, another version of the pebble that now sits on her nightstand.

–

It takes less than a week before her parents start bringing up college again, except now it's all the time. Deadlines which had previously seemed distant and not worth worrying about are now right around the corner, and there doesn't seem to be anyone who _hasn't_ lost their damn mind about it. Every other conversation seems to include “GPA” or “deadlines” or “application”. At least one guy in her homeroom seems to be working on application essays already. And worst of all, not one, not two, but three different teachers tell her she should be considering Ivies.

“I don't think I even want to go to an Ivy!” she complains to her mom over breakfast, the Saturday after the third time this happens. 

“Very sensible,” says her mom, without looking up from whatever Harvard Law Review article she's reading.

“What?” August stops, spoon halfway between cereal and face.

Her mom swaps the Harvard Law Review for her coffee. “There's a lot to be said for cheaper options. If you go to NYU then you can get a prestigious school but still live at home – you know I used to commute into the city and I got so much work done on the train.”

August's been to the city for shows and shopping and once for a family friend's wedding. She doesn't know it inside out, but she feels like she's been introduced. She could go to university there and come home every night to her family. 

“It's what, ninety minutes each way on the train? An hour driving, in good traffic?” she says, trying it out.

“And the saving on rent! You won't appreciate this just yet, honey, but I promise you will when you're older.” Her mom finishes a last bite of toast and pushes the plate across to August. “Could you put this in the dishwasher for me?”

“I appreciate rent!” says August, more sharply than she intends. The plate goes in the dishwasher with an audible clunk.

“You've still got time for early decision, then you'd be all settled and really be able to enjoy senior year.”

“Elliot didn't do early decision,” says August, which is true but, she realises as the words come out of her mouth, kinda beside the point.

“Your brother isn't as academic as you are and SUNY is much cheaper, it's a totally different thing,” says her mom. “If you're going to NYU, or Columbia-”

“Mom!”

“Okay, fine, but I don't think it makes sense to pay for accommodation as well. You could go to a really good school if you stay here, much more easily.”

“I know,” says August. She feels a bit ashamed of herself; she's the problem here. But the longer she sits with the idea of coming back to this exact kitchen island every night for years and years more, the wronger it feels.

\--

August writes: mostly in her diary, but sometimes just random poems or descriptions that get stuck in her head. Turns out she has the time, since she doesn't feel like doing most other stuff. And it seems to help; it feels necessary. Purgative, like lancing a boil, or bloodletting, or some other creepy medieval medical procedure.

–

It's nearly Thanksgiving and Elliot comes home for the holidays. He works in the city now, in a marketing firm as some sort of entry-level grunt where he has like a billion roommates, and August quickly starts wishing he was back there. He's her brother, so of course she loves him, but it takes exactly one instance of his wet bath-towel thrown at her head for her to remember what used to drive her loco about living together.

There's also the weirdly loved-up thing. Elliot and his girlfriend – her name's Crystal: August hasn't met her despite being able to describe her perfectly from the millions of pictures Elliot keeps sharing all over the place – are apparently getting serious. 

“Are you trying to get me to ask if you're going to propose to her?” asks August, after what seems like a million hints. “Cause I'm happy for you, but you can just tell me.”

“No!” he says, immediately sounding more like the ten year old who once took himself and nearly seven year old August out onto the lake in inflatable dinghies, bright yellow ones that looked like a fleet of rubber ducks. “Well, maybe.”

“That's nice, but you've been together for like, three months,” says August, and goes back into her room and closes the door.

–

She does apologise to Elliot for being an asshole, and he's even nice about it, so she tells him about a couple of the half-finished application essays currently on her computer. 

“You go for it, kiddo – I don't think you'll regret it.” He does a wise-Jedi sort of face at her, and she laughs, because sometimes she actually doesn't hate that he's her brother.

–

She has two draft messages to James on her phone. One says _fuck you fuck you fuck you_. The other says _Are you doing ok? I miss you_. She occasionally edits them, lying on her bed and obsessively changing a word or two before changing it back.

She doesn't send either of them.

–

She starts speaking to some of the kids at school she's never spoken to much before. At first it's just because they all happen to be in the library during their free period. One is Jules, who has been one of the eat-lunch-together crowd for a long while but never someone August has hung out with one-on-one. It's kind of nice to get to know her a bit more; Jules has always been sort of to one side, but now it turns out she knows stuff about Mesoamerican history and did one of her college application essays on the Zapotec and Teotihuacan cultures. Another is Tom, who August always sort of meant to talk to more when they both worked on the school paper but never did. He now has a pierced ear and a tattoo and apparently got in trouble for it with the school administration. They swap numbers.

Some kids are even surprising. August finally finishes a couple of the application essays, and she's taking them (printed out in a binder) to her favourite teacher, Ms Pearson, when she realises that one of the other people hovering around the classroom door is one of the girls who a year before had been trying to set up a soccer team. 

“Rachel, do you know August?” says Ms Pearson, with what sounds to August like way too much enthusiasm. Isn't Rachel just into sports or whatever?

“No,” says Rachel. “But I liked what you wrote for the school paper about the soccer team campaign. And you had a poem in one time I really liked.”

“Oh – uh, thank you?” August hadn't exactly forgotten those things, but it's somehow odd to be reminded of them – like a whole other life.

Rachel smiles, and it's just a tiny thing, one tiny connection where a connection hadn't been before, but it feels to August like sending out tiny shoots, tiny green tendrils growing towards the sun.

–

August gets her essays written, and then she has to break it to her mom that the one she wants most is the University of Chicago.

“It's so far away!” says her mom, looking at August like she's sprouted a second head. “You don't know anyone there!”

“I know,” says August, deciding not to mention that that's the point. Jules is applying for UC Santa Barbara, on similar principles; she doesn't mention that, either, or her feeling that her mother's reaction is one of many reasons why she wants to be as far away as she can.

“I don't get it, honey, what does Chicago have that you couldn't have better closer to home? And I don't know what your father's going to think. It's not Ivy, and if you're going to pay those fees...”

“It's considered equally selective these days, Mom,” says August, and settles in for an argument.

Her mom doesn't cry, and after half an hour over breakfast waffles at IHOP, she even manages to sound pretty okay with it and is talking about how maybe August will bump into the Obamas or something.

“That'd be cool,” August says, and puts a forkful of chocolate, strawberry and cream-covered waffle into her mouth.

–

Her dad, par for the course, says “What did your mother say?”, and pats her on the shoulder when she says her mom was fine. August mentally ticks one up to her ability to manage her parents' weirdnesses.

“Just don't get your hopes up too high,” he adds, and August thinks _fuck that_.

–

When she clicks the button to submit the application she feels like she's going to throw up, but she does it.

Right after that, she realises she hasn't dreamed about James' face in weeks. Not even once.

–

She goes driving, but it's not the same. Instead of the sense of wild freedom, she feels penned in: she's annoyed by other drivers, she's got a rustling, restless _something_ under her skin that says she's not going fast enough, far enough.

Initially she thinks she's lost that joy in driving forever, but Rachel, to her surprise, tells her she feels the same. Rachel's found a park that has a chess set, and sometimes, in the afternoons after school lets out, they go there and play really terrible chess.

“I think it's waiting that does it,” she says.

“Waiting and the not knowing,” says August.

“Mm,” says Rachel, and moves her knight, taking a pawn.

“Oh come on, that's got to be cheating,” says August, but there's no heat to it. She doesn't mind. 

Rachel looks up under her lashes, her chin resting on her folded arms, brown against the grey metal table, and August thinks that maybe, maybe one day she'll ask what Rachel thinks about kissing. She thinks maybe, one day, that might be fun.

She loses the game, but that's okay.

–

On admissions decision day, August's mom waits outside the bedroom door while August tries to build up the courage to log in and see. She's had the notification that there's an update on her application, and she knows she's going to have to check it, but maybe she'll chew on her thumbnail while bouncing one leg up and down first.

“What does it say?” calls her mom through the door.

August takes a breath and logs in.

_Congratulations. It is my great pleasure to inform you that you have been admitted..._

She's screaming in relief and joy before she even checks the financial aid package offered.

\--

“You got a _full ride?_ ” says Rachel, on the phone later.

“That I did,” says August. “Want to go for milkshakes to celebrate?”

Rachel does.

–

She flies to Chicago, and gets a cab from the airport, because even though she's left, like, _so_ much stuff in her room at home, she's got two big bags and a suitcase to lug with her. (Only some of that is her brother's parting gift of a party selection of snacks. The secret bottle of alcohol to go with it that her parents aren't allowed to know about is being delivered, or so he says in a text.) The cab driver jokes about it as he helps load all the luggage into the trunk. Her mom, who's come to help settle in, makes a comment, but August doesn't even hear it, because she's looking around at everything in wonder.

The buildings get taller and everything seems stranger. The colours are different: the concrete is sort of grey-brown in a way she's never seen before, the sky a different blue. It looks nearly as huge as the sky over the ocean, but straight up instead of out to the horizon, like it's somehow enormous but incredibly far away. She wonders if it'll be the same over the lake; Lake Michigan is here somewhere.

“Look, honey, is that your new dorm?”

It's got these serious-looking pillars outside, framing the glass frontage like an announcement, and bright flags welcoming the new students – “Welcome Class of 2023!” It totally is her new dorm. Her new home.

She gets her mom to take photos so she can share them with people. By the time they're done, the room looks pretty cute. Rachel sends back a picture of her own new dorm room; Inez sends back a selfie where she's eating an ice-cream by the ocean and doing a thumbs up. Her mom goes back to her hotel, and August lies on her new bed, by herself, looks at the ceiling, and wonders who she's going to be.

–

In the lobby, there's a poster for the Center for Identity and Inclusion. August doesn't know it yet, she's busy signing up for classes and unpacking, but she's going to go to the Center and she's going to find her life changes all over again.

She might end up falling for a Potawatomi woman with short spiky hair who sometimes runs the front desk at the student center and always remembers to tell young people about the mentoring programme. She might end up talking to a poet there and spend the next four years improving her writing, reaching greater and greater heights in an attempt to impress them, before realising she's actually become a serious poet without realising it. (Her mom is _not_ what you might call happy about that, but it works out okay.) She might show some of her writing to the shy young man who organises the library events, and end up moving with him to Europe when he gets a job at the Sorbonne in Paris; with one thing and another they break up, and she stays in Paris and still lives there when she's ninety.

She might come out to her family; she might never want to; she might be caught by her father kissing a partner goodbye or she might write a family-wide email at twenty-two that causes her aunt to refuse to speak to her again. She might cry to her friends, worrying about it. She might cry with joy when it turns out her dad's fine with whatever she chooses, and when one of her cousins sends her a video message in response that just says _me, too_.

She might send a selfie to Rachel one day that sparks a conversation that ends in Rachel visiting Chicago, and them kissing in the rain on the steps by the Riverwalk. A million possibilities.

August actually doesn't pay much attention to the poster, when she first sees it out of the corner of her eye. It's on a crowded noticeboard, and she's got to meet a TA somewhere at nine but she doesn't know where the room is – there seem to be a million buildings and all of them have a million classrooms and lecture theatres and offices. But it catches her attention, briefly. Enough to make a mental note. She takes it in, and she opens the door, and she goes out into the world.


End file.
